How culturally appropriate are we in care?

13
Nov

The ILC Multicultural Aged Care Services (ILC MACS) recently hosted “Unpacking the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse National Ageing and Aged Care Strategy”. Developed by the Department of Health and Aging (now Department of Social Services) and released December 2012; this strategy was developed to assist in the Living Longer Living Better (now Healthy Life Better Aging) aged care reforms.

This workshop was attended by service organisations across the community and residential aged care sector, health and government.

The session was facilitated by our PICAC (Partners in Culturally Appropriate Care) national network partners Rosa Colanero (SA) and Ljubica Petrov (Victoria) who have facilitated similar workshops in their own states.

An overview of the National CaLD strategy was provided detailing the principles and objectives. Feedback provided by participants was that they were challenged to think beyond meeting auditing and accreditation requirements and to focus on the individual needs of a person with a CaLD background. Participants were invited to prioritise their organisations responses to against these principles and objectives.

For more information about the CaLD strategy which is available in seven (7) languages Greek, Italian, Mandarin (Chinese), Vietnamese, Lebanese, Turkish and Hindi (Indian) view:

ILC MACS provides CaLD demographics for your area to assist with planning. We also deliver training, resources and support to aged care service providers to assist them to meet the needs of older people from CaLD backgrounds. The ILC MACS team can facilitate cultural briefings for organisations to understand their clients/ residents better as well as provide links with culturally diverse communities.

The question is how will organisations continue to respond to the changing needs of 20% of the Australian population who are over 65 years old and born outside of Australia which equates to more than 600,000 people and by 2021 will rise to more than 30%?